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Class _JStV.2Jt.il- 

Book X2lCX. 

CopightN 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



FATHER TAYLOR 




PHOTOGRAPHED BY J. W. BLACK & CO. 



ENGRAVED BYT. JOHNSON. 



BY PERUISSION OF THE CENTURY CO. 



EDWARD THOMPSOX TAYLOR. 

"Father Taylor." 



FATHER TAYLOR 



ROBERT COLLYER 



POIB 


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BOSTON 

AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 

1906 



Copyright 1906 
American Unitarian Association xo \ 

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LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

NOV 22 1906 

Copyright Entry 

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CLASS ft_ XXc., No, 

COPY B. 



Published October, 1906 



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FATHER TAYLOR 

I still remember on a May morning many 
years ago, going to a prayer meeting 
at the West Church in Boston in our An- 
niversary Week, where I saw Father Taylor, 
the seaman's chaplain, for the first time 
in my life. The meetings in those days 
were usually held in the Hollis Street 
Church, where I had gone the year before 
to wonder over our usage, so different from 
that of my mother church — the Methodist — 
which I had then but lately left. For there 
we would pray as the spirit moved us, or 
as we were moved by the leader when the 
tides of the spirit ran low; but in ours no 
one would pray except the Leader of the 
meeting and then the brethren would rise 
here and yonder and talk about prayer, 
so that in some moments I would wonder 
what was the use if this was "the conclu- 
sion of the whole matter." 

Dr. Bartol had charge of the meeting 
in his own church and after the opening 

[1] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

services there was silence for a space, and 
then he spoke to a man well on in years 
who was sitting near him and who rose 
at once to his feet, when there was the 
rustle in the meeting of an eager expecta- 
tion in those who were near me, while 
something like the breath which touches 
the leaves in a garden touched all the faces 
I could glance at. So I bent forward to 
listen when he began to speak in low, soft 
tones for some moments — as I caught his 
words — about Doves. He had seen them 
that morning as he came to the meeting, 
crowding to a window to be fed by a neigh- 
bor, and the sight had reminded him of 
the words of the prophet: "Who are these 
that fly as doves to the window ?" And as he 
warmed to his theme his voice grew clear 
and presently the old church seemed to 
be full of doves. They came crowding in 
from the New England woods and the 
dovecotes at the North End, — doves of the 
prophets' time, and doves with the dew of 
that May morning on their wings, white 

[2] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

and purple and golden, out of the heavens 
and into the heavens, — and then somehow 
we were doves, come at the Father's call 
that morning to be fed from his hand, or 
longing to plume our wings to fly away 
and be at rest. 

It was the enchantment to me of pure 
genius, — the spell cast over me by one who 
was spellbound in his vision — the prayer 
meeting of a lifetime — the pentecost of 
flying doves. 

Dr. Bartol asked me to speak, I remem- 
ber, after the man with the vision sat down. 
So I said some words that sounded like 
an echo many times removed. And I wist 
not who he was who had wrought the won- 
der, so I asked a man who sat near me and 
he answered, "Why, that's Father Taylor," 
with the wonder in his tone that any man in 
Boston should ask such a question. Then 
Dr. Bartol said he wanted to introduce me 
to him, and when this was done I held out my 
hand rather shyly, I guess, but he did not 
offer his in return: he opened his arms 
[3] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

wide and gave me a great brotherly hug. 
He also kissed me on the cheek, — 
quite a new experience. I had never been 
kissed by a man before, not even by my 
own father within my memory. And so 
it came to pass that we were fast friends 
from that morning to the end of his life 
on the earth. It made no difference that 
I was no longer a member of our mother 
church. I was a Unitarian, graft, he would 
say, on the Methodist stock, and this was 
a good variety when we ripened well. 

This was Father Taylor, the waif, 
when we first hear of him, mothered by a 
poor woman in Richmond, Virginia. A 
cabin boy and man before the mast, a 
farm laborer for a spell, and shoemaker 
or, it may be, only a cobbler, a tin 
pedler, and a Methodist local preacher, 
then a preacher in full orders, and finally 
seamen's chaplain in the city of Boston. 
"Jeremy Taylor in butternut," Harriet 
Martineau said, and the only man this 
side the sea Charles Dickens went to hear 
[4] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

on his first visit to these states; the man 
who delighted Jenny Lind also, and Miss 
Bremer and Mrs. Jameson, among those 
who heard him from the old world; the 
man in whose large, sunny heart John A. 
Andrew loved to sun himself to the last, 
and whose face was so radiant in his home 
that his small daughter made up her mind 
this was what made the flowers open in 
their living-room. 

Shall I try to touch his likeness as he 
stood in the West Church that May morn- 
ing? A broad, thickset man, you could 
easily see he had been in his prime a man 
you would trace back to the lion if you were 
taken by the humor of seeing him through 
Darwin's glass. A man, with a great 
mane and gray eyes — the prophet's gray — 
with, I suspect, a gleam of red fire in them 
when his blood boiled, as it was rather 
apt to do, but always for good reason. A 
brow wide and ample, that knotted rather 
than knitted under the pressure of intense 
thought or overmastering emotion. A grand 
[5] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

jaw well set and well corded, and a mouth 
large and limber, equal to every demand 
in speech or sermon. 

This was the lion, but then there was a 
lamb also that made good to you the 
prophet's vision of the good time coming 
when they shall lie down together, for, 
hot in his anger, he was gentle also as 
mothers are with their little children. 
Indeed he could be a mother in some 
sweet human sense, for once when he must 
take the services at a funeral in a poor 
home where the mother was left with a 
family of small children to fend for and 
he stood by the dust to pray, he was silent 
for some moments and then he moaned, 
"O God, we are a widow." I could not 
learn what words he said beside, and in- 
deed these tell the story of the Christ-like 
heart which made the mother's sorrow his 
sorrow and her life his life. It is also told 
of him that when in some meeting a brother 
asked him to make a prayer he said, "I 
cannot make a prayer." Well, this I 
[6] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

think was not made by him, but through 
him. 

Edward Taylor was born on Christmas 
day, 1793, at Richmond in Virginia, and 
into a forlorn world, for he could barely 
remember his father or mother; there was 
no tender care for his advent, or gold, frank- 
incense, and myrrh from wise men who saw 
the star shining over the stable and the 
manger. This woman whose name we do 
not find gave him a home and raised him 
in some fashion in the earliest years, while 
one tradition remains to cast a curious 
gleam on the man and his election to the 
eminence he attained as "one called to be 
an apostle separated unto the gospel of 
God." For it was remembered how he 
would hold a funeral service when the 
opportunity came over a chicken he had 
killed with a stone, but having only negro 
children for mourners who would roll over 
and over in ecstacies of delight and laughter, 
he would trounce them to bring real tears 
and have a proper funeral. 
[7] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

But when he was about seven years old, 
as he was picking up chips one day for the 
woman who mothered him, the captain of 
a vessel passing by on the street said to 
him, "Come along with me, boy, and be 
a sailor." What he said beside we do not 
know: only that the boy let the chips 
drop he had gathered, ran to the woman 
who housed him and shouted, " Good- 
bye, mother, I am going to be a sailor." 
So he went to sea as a cabin boy, no 
doubt, to toss about on the great and 
wide ocean for ten years, enduring hard- 
ness as a good sailor; and then he comes 
into the light again in Boston and to a 
pregnant crisis and turning point in his 
life when he was seventeen years of age. 

And this was the crisis. Wandering 
about the city on a Sunday morning he 
dropped by mere chance, as we are apt to 
say — where there is no chance in matters 
so momentous — into the Park Street Church, 
and was so taken by the sermon from Dr. 
Griffin we may presume that the hunger 
[8] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

touched him to be able some day to preach 
a sermon like that from the lips of the 
great divine. 

On another Sunday he went to a Metho- 
dist meeting and heard Elijah Hedding, 
who afterward became an eminent bishop, 
— a man of a sunnier heart and a larger 
and sweeter gospel than that he heard in 
the Park Street Church. So while the first 
only went to the lad's head the second went 
to his heart, and then, before he left the 
meeting-house, something was done for 
him my mother church does best always 
when the pews work kindly with the pul- 
pit, — one of the brethren spoke to him 
kindly, gave him his hand, and asked him 
to come again. The boy wanted human 
sympathy and here it was, warm from the 
good man's heart. It was probably the 
first tender word that had ever been said 
to him in his rough seaman's life. He 
asked him about his soul, — it is probable 
he was not aware until then that he had one. 
So he was converted in the good old Metho- 
[9] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

dist fashion of knowing you are converted. 
Methodism was his nursing mother and he 
loved her to the end of his life. And once 
when one of our ministers said some sour 
words about her ministry he rose in wrath 
and defied us to equal them, set foot to 
foot with ours, with a Bible in their hands, 
and a wilderness of human souls to save. 

In the war with England in 1812 he went 
to sea on the Black Hawk, privateer. She 
was captured very soon by the enemy and 
her crew were sent prisoners to Halifax, 
Nova Scotia. Our young convert had at- 
tended a prayer meeting steadily after his 
conversion, when he came ashore, held in the 
house of a poor woman who had mothered 
the youth and cared for him in many ways ; 
but she had lost her husband now and had 
gone to live in Halifax, where, having pity 
on our prisoners, she would go to help them 
by all the means in her power. So it fell 
out one day that going on her good errand, 
as she was passing a window, some one cried 
through the bars, "Mother, oh, Mother!" 
[10] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

It was Edward, her Boston boy, and she 
was to him as a mother indeed. 

Then it came to pass that our sea dogs 
who were laid there by the heels broke out 
in rank rebellion against the prison chap- 
lain, who would and must read the prayers 
to them for King George and the whole 
royal family to their great disgust, so 
they would not hear him. But finding 
young Taylor was "a praying man," they 
gave him orders to take the chaplain's place 
at the praying. He was quite ready to do 
this, and after some time it dawned on them 
that a fellow who was such a master hand 
at the praying would be just as good at the 
preaching, for they said it was only the 
difference between being on your knees 
or your feet. But here, as we say, they 
struck a snag: he did not know even his 
alphabet, so how could he find a text, and 
without a text how could he preach a ser- 
mon? The problem was solved easily. 
One man was a master hand at reading, 
so they found a Bible and he went to work 
[11] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

reading texts at haphazard, we may pre- 
sume; and upon his reading the words, 
"A good and wise child is better than an 
old and foolish king," Taylor said, "That 
will do for a sermon," launched out into 
the story of our glorious Revolution, set 
them all afire, and came down heavily 
to their vast delight on the old and foolish 
king. So from this time he was their 
chaplain on a prisoner's ration while the 
other man drew the pay. 

Coming home when the prison doors were 
opened, of course the young apostle could 
not hide the light and fire in him under 
a bushel, for that would have burnt the 
bushel; so he would speak in meet'n' and 
they began to hear of this strange creature 
who was stirring up the gift which was 
in him because he could not be silent, — 
this cross between a sailor and a saint, — 
and determined to give him a license as a 
local preacher if certain wise elders they 
sent to hear him should bring a good report. 
The tradition was that he must not be told 
[12] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

of their presence, but had been told by a 
friend they would be there and took for 
the text of his exhortation: "By the life 
of Pharaoh ye are spies." 

Be this as it may, he was licensed to preach 
at nothing a year and find yourself, — the 
terms on which I preached through eleven 
happy years in my old mother church. And 
to find himself he hired out to a ped- 
ler in Ann street, Boston, who in his way 
became a co-worker together with the 
Most High by sending him down the coast 
with a load of tin notions. He struck 
Saugus in his journey, sold out his wares 
there, and then was moved to preach, — 
sold his tins, mark you, before he began 
to preach, not after, — and so won the heart 
of a fine old lady there that she offered him 
a home to work on her farm, and taught 
him to read the Bible so now there was 
no need to spell painfully or make a wild 
guess at the hard words, for it seems he had 
advanced so far already. 

It fell out in due time that Amos Binney, 
[13] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

a rich and generous man in Boston, heard 
the young evangelist and determined that 
he should have a proper education for the 
ministry in the only school of the prophets 
Methodism possessed in those days. So 
he went in all good will, but only stayed in 
the school about six weeks. He wist not 
what was the matter, but the truth is he 
was one of the men who make good the 
poet's lines 

" The spirit which from God is made 
The noblest of its kind 
Asks not the help of rules that serve 
To guide the feebler mind." 

And here was one of these spirits in posses- 
sion of Edward Taylor. 

But the mother was wise touching her 
strange son. So in no long time a full 
license was given him with the proper or- 
dination, and he was sent to Marblehead 
to take charge of the infant church in that 
town. And it was in Marblehead he found 
[14] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

an angel to help and bless him through more 
than forty years. Deborah was the name of 
the maiden who was to sit, not under a palm- 
tree, but under a pine, and hold in her heart 
this nobler Barak. It was lovely beyond 
my telling to find them in their home some 
forty years after their wedding and to hear 
the old man's voice calling for "Mother" 
Mother from another room. It was a 
wonderful voice even then, harsh in scorn 
of meanness, but musical as Longfellow's 
when he would call for or talk to "Mother." 
And Deborah might well win and hold 
such a man's love; she was "not like 
in like but like in difference," for gentle- 
ness was as heaven all about her and the 
peace of God that passeth understanding 
shone in her eyes. She was a woman all 
good men would love to call "mother" 
just for the beauty of the word and the 
grace. And so it would have been of no 
use Edward's saying on his part "for better 
or worse" when he took her for his wife 
and she took him for her husband, be- 
[15] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

cause there was no worse or could be: it 
was all and only for better. 

And we may easily presume the only 
real trouble that ever came of their wed- 
ding was this, that when he was growing 
old and feeble she had to leave him for 
a little while, less I think than two years, 
for the other home and room in the many 
mansions in the Eternal City of God. 

But we may be sure there were no cards 
sent out as invitations to the wedding, or 
orange blossoms, or whatever then might 
be the fashion, or a wedding march on the 
organ, — for indeed it might have been no 
wedding in any wise. For one day our 
young apostle, who was then abiding in 
Hingham, being vastly in love, as he was 
vastly every thing such a man may be, 
climbed to a hill top to have a look 
toward Marblehead across the gray waters 
and to blow great sighs over toward the 
granite cliffs. He had a telescope so that 
his eyes might help his heart, as he lay at 
length on the grass and talked to himself, 
[16] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

as he was fond of doing, with as it seems 
good reason. For when some one said to 
him once, "Father Taylor, why do you 
talk to yourself as you walk along the 
streets?" he answered, "Because I like to 
talk to a sensible man, sir." He was talk- 
ing to himself when in a flash the thought 
struck him and he leaped to his feet with 
the cry, "Bless my heart, this is our wed- 
ding day and I forgot all about it!" 

He had forgotten, and there he was all 
those miles away from Marblehead, where 
Deborah and the wedding guests were 
waiting. There was no telegraph or tele- 
phone or railroad train in 1819, and if there 
had been a wire he could hardly have sent 
a message to tell Deborah that he had clean 
forgotten this was their wedding day. But 
I warrant you the maiden's quiet, stead- 
fast heart was not greatly disturbed. She 
would know if Edward ran he would 
only run one way; yet we should love to 
have a report of his journey next morning 
to Marblehead and how his genius rose 
[17] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

to the swift demand when he began to tell 
them how it was. Still, I think we can 
imagine how the man and maid foregath- 
ered and can dispense with the report. 

Soon after the wedding our young apostle 
was sent to Duxbury to take charge of "the 
cause" there, or start one. Our church 
in Duxbury then was on the turn of the 
tide between the ancient puritan faith 
and the Unitarian. Dr. Allyn, who was 
and had been for many years in charge 
of our parish, was quite disposed to look 
down in disdain on this young interloper 
who had come to disturb the long-enduring 
slumber of his fine old church. And meet- 
ing him one day on the street he said : " So, 
young man, ye have come to preach in 
Duxbury, have ye?" "Yes," the young 
man answered, "the Lord bid us go forth 
and preach the gospel to every creature." 
"Yes, to be sure," the old man replied, "he 
bid us preach the gospel to every creature, 
but he never said every critter should preach 
the gospel, sir," and went his way in wrath. 
[18] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

His work down to 1828 lay close along 
the coast from the Cape to Bristol and it 
was done in his own way, man-fashion. 
He would say in the after years, "Like an 
Indian, I walk free, and he was neither 
to hold nor bind." He would preach as 
he was moved then as always, and when, 
well on in life, a friend said to him, "What 
are you going to preach about on Sunday, 
Father Taylor?" he answered promptly, 
"Don't know, don't want to forestall God." 
And as he preached, so he prayed. So it 
was remembered how at Barnstable one 
Sunday in the prayer he cried: "Lord, 
bless meek Burr and proud Pratt and save 
wicked old Alden." And when Parson 
Thaxter, who had been a soldier in the 
Revolution, was sadly put about because 
the young apostle was drawing his people 
away from the ancient church, told him a 
piece of his mind and raised his cane to 
strike him, but could not do it, the young 
man next Sunday prayed that every hair on 
the old man's venerable head might be hung 
[19] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

with a jewel of the Lord. There was no 
striking a man like young Taylor, — you 
might as soon raise your cane to strike one 
of Milton's angels. 

Nor was it possible to have and hold him 
down there on the Cape, because here was 
a man who must find and fill his place in 
Boston. So about 1828 the good Meth- 
odists in the city felt a concern for those 
"who go down to the sea in ships." Here 
was a wilderness of souls no man seemed 
to care for and Edward Taylor was their 
chosen evangelist to do this momentous 
work. But his advent in the great city 
was not heralded by deftly pointed para- 
graphs in the papers; it was heralded in 
a way dear to the heart of the old Method- 
ism by a flash from the inner heavens. 
A man of some note in the city, who had 
fallen on evil ways and was a scorner of 
the Most High, dreamed of a stranger 
who was coming to preach in Boston and 
was told to go and hear him. I do not 
make out that he was told where to go, but 
[20] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

on a Sunday morning he stumbled into 
the meeting-house in what was then Metho- 
dist Alley, saw young Taylor in the pulpit, 
and felt sure this was the man he was 
bidden to hear. The preacher won his 
heart, he came again and again, was finally 
converted, and from that time for twenty 
years lived a faithful and good life. 

This was the advent of his work in Boston 
through more than forty years. The chapel 
presently became too small for him and was 
in peril also of being sold for the mortgage. 
But the Unitarians in the city had begun 
to take note of the high worth of his work 
among the sailors and turned in with a 
will to help him. Nathaniel Barret, a 
merchant in the city, wrote a hundred notes 
to a hundred men mainly of our faith call- 
ing them together, laid the matter before 
them, and it was resolved that a new meet- 
ing-house should be built for him, and this 
was done. The Bethel was built that still 
stands in North Square. And in her old 
age Mother Taylor would tell you "the 
[21] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

Unitarians were the best friends they had 
through all the years, giving money by 
thousands and thousands until the great 
boarding-house as well as the Bethel was 
entirely free from debt." 

So this naturally drew Father Taylor into 
a close and warm friendship with the Uni- 
tarians in Boston, while to the end of his 
life he was a free-hearted and free-spoken 
Methodist. And it is down in the record 
that once when a brother Methodist minis- 
ter who was not pleased over the free af- 
filiation said to him, "Father Taylor, 
why do you fellowship so much with those 
Unitarians ? If you need money we will give 
you all you need," — he answered swiftly, 
"I shall not break with those Unitarians 
to please you, brother, or anybody; I can- 
not get along without them, but I can get 
along without you." He did not know 
his man. It was not the money he needed 
then, but the sweet and free fellowship 
of men like Ezra Gannett and Cyrus Bartol, 
James Freeman Clarke and many more I 
[22] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

cannot name. And again, when Lyman 
Beecher, the minister of the Park Street 
Church, said to him one day, "Taylor, are 
you cheating the Unitarians or are they 
cheating you?" he answered promptly, 
"Wrong, Doctor, on both counts. There 
is a third party in Boston bound to do the 
cheating, but I mention no names." The 
truth was, as Dr. Bartol finely says, "he 
walked at large and free." He knocked at 
every door, Orthodox, Episcopal, Roman, 
or Radical, and everywhere he was wel- 
come. He had the freedom of the city. 

He compared many of our religious 
troubles to two bands of turtles as he had 
watched them on the ship's deck when 
they would march up toward each other 
stretching out their necks, and the side that 
could stretch its neck the highest compelled 
the other party to retreat. His heart was 
great enough to hold us all, but none could 
own the head or heart of Father Taylor 
and leave the good and true of any name 
or denomination out in the cold. 
[23] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

He loved to come to our gatherings now 
and then, as he came on the morning when 
I saw and heard him the first time — that 
most memorable morning. But he would 
draw his bow on us and let fly his arrows, 
saying more than once that we might as 
well try to heat a furnace with snow-balls 
as to save men's souls in the way we went 
about our work. There was some truth 
in his criticism, but it was not the whole 
truth or true in any wise touching many 
men we can count in those far-away years. 
Father Taylor was working in one way 
and they in another, each good and essen- 
tial, only the great hot heart in him could 
not tolerate what seemed to him to be like 
trying to grow wheat within, shall I say, 
the Arctic Circle. But, loving us, he loved 
us to the end. Men among our laymen 
like Amos Binney, Nathaniel Barret, Al- 
bert Fearing, and Governor Andrew, of 
his own generous pattern, were to him as 
sons and brothers. He had said to such 
men when they turned in to lend a hand 
[24] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

for his Bethel: "I do not want your arches 
and draperies and Corinthian columns for 
my Bethel; give me the shavings that drop 
from the pillars and I will be content." 
"Drop your gold into this ocean," he said 
again, "and it will cast a wave on the shores 
of Europe that will strike back to the islands 
of the South Seas, rebound to the north- 
west coast, make the circuit of the world, 
and roll back to the port of Boston." They 
heard and answered him with a good Amen, 
gave him his seaman's Bethel for a temple 
and a throne. But he was no petty kinglet 
to be maintained on his throne by the 
great guns of Boston. For when they would 
crowd his Bethel on a Sunday so that his 
sailor men could not find a seat, he would 
say to some man: "You must stand, sir. 
Jack must have a seat." So Jack saw the 
point and sat on his dignity. Here was 
the place where Jack was better than 
his master. He knew what he was about 
when he ran out the ancient chaplain of 
the prison in Halifax who said the wrong 
[25] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

prayers, and elected the young praying 
man, saying to him, "If you can pray like 
that you can preach too; it is only a ques- 
tion of talking on your knees or your feet." 
So the sailors loved him, honored and fol- 
lowed him. The Bethel was his temple 
and Father Taylor his supreme pontiff. 
The story is true in the spirit if we cannot 
vouch for the letter, of two sailors who 
wanted to find the temple one Sunday 
morning, but, not sure of their bearings, 
on their arrival there the one who could 
read or perhaps spell saw the name of the 
place over the door and slowly went through 
his work: "'Bet,' that's beat; 'h-e-1,' 
tliat's hell; all right, Jack, come along, 
this is where the old man beats hell, let's 
go right in." 

And what a throne of power for good 
it was! Writing no word of his sermon 
as a rule, though he took good heed to his 
preparation while still he must not fore- 
stall God, the grand thoughts came flying 
on the wings of the great moments. Yet 
[26] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

there were times again when it was like 
dropping buckets into empty wells. One 
morning he touched the theme in his ser- 
mon, always so near his heart, of a young 
man coming to the great city from a sweet 
country home and nurture, — a young man 
full of noble resolutions and aspirations 
falling away from one temptation into 
another, but always down, down, down. 
He paused when he had touched the pict- 
ure with the last dark shadows, lifted his 
hand, and whispered: "Hush-h-h-h, he is 
cursing his mother — shut the windows of 
heaven, shut the windows." 

Jenny Lind went one Sunday morning 
to hear him. I am not sure he knew she 
was there. He was preaching on amuse- 
ments and paid a glowing tribute to "the 
sweetest singer that ever alighted on our 
shores" and to her modesty and charity. 
The sweet singer was leaning forward 
listening in delight, when a very tall man 
sitting on the pulpit stairs rose up slowly. 
When Father Taylor had come to the close 
[27] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

of his eulogy the stranger wanted to know 
whether a person who died at one of Jenny 
Lind's concerts would go to heaven. The 
old man glared at him some moments — 
not many — and then said: "A good man 
will go to heaven, sir, die where he may, 
and a fool will be a fool wherever he lives, 
though he sits on my pulpit stairs." 

And being the man he was, Father Taylor 
could not take kindly to those who, being 
as he insisted the Lord's stewards, kept 
both the accounts and the income and said 
it "would need more grace to save such 
men than it would take skim milk to fat 
an elephant." "Some people of this 
brand," he said again, "may think they 
are saints, but if they could see themselves 
as the just in heaven see them they would 
not dare to look a decent devil in the face." 

The story is told of an eminent minister 
in England that when his church presented 
him with a fine sum of money, after many 
years of good service, on the day of his golden 
wedding, he turned to his wife and said: 
[28] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

"My dear, that is yours, not mine. You 
have taken care of the purse all these years, 
and the home and the children and of me; 
so you must take care of this also." This 
was what Mother Taylor did through all 
the years, and she had to care especially 
for the home; and of the very soul of gener- 
osity, the prodigal father, she had to be 
watchful, wary, and wise, and even then 
she was not always able to "make ends 
meet." 

Father Taylor had the habit a good 
woman and housewife can never quite put 
up with, of bringing any number of friends 
home to take pot-luck, while for many a 
year the pot was not full to overflowing 
for chance and hungry guests of this sort. 
One day among many such he rushed in 
crying that so many men were coming to 
dinner that day. It was quite a party of 
ministers. So Mother gave him the money 
to rush out again and get the provision. 
He came back presently with a long face 
and said, "Mother, you must go and buy 
[29] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

the dinner. I met such a man, he was in 
great distress, so I gave him the ten dollars." 
On another day Mother sent him out to 
pay a bill with fifty dollars in his keeping. 
He came back after a while and said: 
"Mother, I met such a man on the street; 
he is a poor, old, broken-down minister, 
you know. He did not beg, but I wanted 
to help him and I could not for shame 
ask him to change a bill for fifty dollars, 
when he was not worth fifty cents, I am 
sure; so I gave him the bill." 

He greatly liked chicken prepared in 
Mother's way, and with her own hands 
she always made the dish and had it ready 
when he came home from the watch-night 
meeting on the turn of the new year's morn- 
ing. And when they were far on in years, 
on the watch-night she prepared the dish 
ready for him and the friends he would 
bring to the feast — a great and ample 
preparation. But as he came home from 
the meeting some one told him of a poor 
family at the North End in great destitu- 
[30] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

tion. "Where are they?" he cried, found 
where they were housed, rushed home, 
found the dear good dish of chicken ready 
on the table for the supper, and took it in 
his hands to the poor place. Some mem- 
bers of his own household followed him 
and when they arrived, there were the 
famishing children dancing in wonder and 
delight over the feast set on some apology 
for a table. Mother had to get Father and 
the friends another supper; but this was 
no grief, — she knew her man and had long 
ago turned her cross, if these things were 
a cross, into a crown. 

Father Taylor was in his fair, full prime 
in the times I have glanced at and strong 
both for fighting and fending. His life 
and the work he must do lay mainly in 
Boston in his Bethel and his Sailors' Home, 
while he also made three journeys over sea 
to the Old World. He went over the first 
time when his Bethel was building, and 
again in 1842 when he was quite worn out 
with the intense labor of three services on 
[31] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

the Sunday, no end of meetings in the 
week, the oversight and care of his Sailors ' 
Home, and the perpetual calls of all kinds 
he must answer that allowed him no rest. 
He went to the Holy Land on his second 
journey and told me once, with a vast 
enjoyment of the humor, how in crossing 
the desert they came one morning to a place 
where they must halt for breakfast and 
must leave their luggage in one tent by 
order of the chief and take their breakfast 
in another at some distance. But there 
was an Englishman in the company who 
did not want to leave his luggage at the 
mercy of the Bedoween, and when the 
company went forward he stayed by the 
stuff to the wonder of the chief who had 
charge of the escort and the stuff. He 
stood for some moments wondering what 
was the matter, and when the light broke 
on his mind he said with a smile to the 
man: "Do not be afraid, your things will 
not be stolen, they are quite safe; there is 
not a 'Christian' within fifteen leagues 
[32] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

of the tent." So the Englishman went to 
his breakfast in great content. 

His last journey over sea was in the 
Macedonian, the good ship sent from Bos- 
ton to Ireland loaded with provision in the 
black year of the potato famine. They 
made him chaplain of the holy mission and 
saw that he had quite a splendid personal 
outfit; but when he returned home he had 
barely the clothing to keep him decent 
and warm. He had given all he had, piece 
by piece, to the poor creatures, but they 
had given him a fine bundle of canes — 
blackthorns — and two Irish terriers. These 
dogs, he said, were just what he wanted, 
for Mother now would never be troubled 
any more with rats. 

These journeys, with another to the West 
and South, are blended with the years I 
have touched of his life in Boston. He 
would say to his intimate friends in his 
tired moments, "I do not wear out, I tear 
out." So when I first met him he seemed 
older than the account of the years. The 
[33] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

hard work had told on him, but when the 
holy fires burned they still burned white. 
He said when he was well on in years 
that he had never seen an unhappy day, 
and when he went abroad on his last voy- 
age and was parting with the hosts of friends 
he said, "Laugh till I come back." Listen- 
ing to a gloomy sermon one day he said: 
"That man preaches as if he had killed 
somebody." But as the years stole on 
there were times when he did not take 
kindly to the thought of dying, leaving his 
home, his Bethel, and his boys, as he would 
call the sailors. And one day in this dolor 
a good sister of his faith, thinking to com- 
fort him, said: "Bless the Lord, Father 
Taylor, there is rest in heaven and you 
will soon be there " ; but he growled in reply : 
"Go there yourself if you want to, I want 
to stay here." "But think of the angels 
all waiting to welcome you," and he growled 
again: "I don't want angels, I want folks." 
And then in an instant the old radiance 
flashed out and he said, "Angels are folks 
[34] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

too." And this gave him comfort, as well 
it might, for he wanted what I think we 
all long for, a human heaven where the 
angels are folks too and ours are among 
them. 

Yet now and then in his weakness and 
pain they would hear him moan: "Lord, 
what am I here for, — I am of no use. 
The love of my friends will soon be gone, 
and my love for them. Now, Lord, some 
summer morning soon, snatch me home to 
thyself." The last time I saw him in his 
home he was on the far verge of time, but 
was bright and cheery as a boy between the 
spasms of labor and pain. And I still re- 
member, after a strain that made the cords 
start, when he recovered he whispered to 
me, "The old hull's breaking up; it has 
taken a good deal to break her, but she's 
going. I feel her start through all her tim- 
bers when these fits come on." Then some- 
thing, — I do not quite remember, — some bit 
of humor between ourselves, I think, caught 
the old man and he shook all over with 
[35] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

silent laughter. Father Taylor could laugh 
louder and make no sound than most men 
who make the welkin ring. It was laughter 
incarnate. Then he kissed me good-bye 
and I saw him in this world no more. 

We hear of only one incident after this 
that may be mentioned and must be. He 
had fallen into the way when the tides ran 
low of looking into the glass and talking 
to his shadow there. He would tell it 
he was an old sinner and would go to hell 
after all. And one night when he was 
very low the humor took him to have it 
out with his double. A young minister 
was with him, and to help the poor old man 
in this dolor he began to pray for him as 
he would for such a sinner who must repent 
before it was too late. But when the young 
brother rose from his knees the old lion 
roared, — and I imagine his genius never 
flamed out into a finer fire than in those 
moments when he came back out of the 
valley and shadow of death to reveal to 
the young man what the deeper heart al- 
[36] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

ways holds in sacred trust, that I can say 
that about myself to the Most High which 
I will permit no man to say about me even 
on the far verge of life and time. 

He died on the 6th of April, 1871, and 
went out with the tide, as his sailor boys 
loved to remember, — and I think the last 
memory recorded is that he doubled his 
fist, or tried to double it, at his nurse because 
he insisted on dying in one position when 
the nurse would fain have him lay more 
at ease. 

Shall I turn now from this rapid glance 
at Father Taylor's life to touch his rare 
and unique genius ? I think there can be 
no mistake about this, first of all, that he 
was the one man in all the world for 
the place which he was called and elected 
from on high to fill. Here was the port 
of Boston swarming in those days with 
sailors, simple almost as children in so 
many ways, but with the pent-up passions 
of strong men when they came ashore 
[37] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

that exposed them to fearful temptations, 
beset as they were then by evil men and 
women who sought to devour them. 

And here was a city full of churches to 
overflowing and ministers of the first emi- 
nence. Yet no man of the whole number 
could take hold of the sailors man-fashion, 
save them from the perils, and set them, 
as we were used to say, with their faces 
toward Zion. Dr. Channing was preach- 
ing those wonderful sermons that are still 
"the word of life," in the Federal Street 
Church. He was and is still our great 
apostle; but we may well doubt whether 
any sermon from his lips ever reached one 
man before the mast and won him to be 
Christ's man. And the lurid fires kindled 
by Lyman Beecher flamed up on Park 
Street Corner, but Jack would grin if he 
ever heard of them and go to a hell of his 
own at the North End. 

The great schools of the prophets also 
were turning out ministers by scores or 
hundreds, all told, but they might about 
[38] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

as well have been trained in Mars for any 
good they would be or do to Jack. And 
I think a rude sailor man Father Taylor 
came across in a foreign port on one of his 
journeys over sea touched the quick heart 
of the question from the sailor's stand- 
point when he said to our chaplain: "You 
seems to be a good old chap who knows 
what's what; so I will tell you what I likes 
along o' preachin'. When a man is a- 
preachin' at me I want him to take somert 
hot out of his heart and shove it into mine, 
■ — that's what I calls preachin'." 

Well, this was the one sure way to win 
the sailors in the port of Boston and Father 
Taylor was the one man to win them, be- 
cause he had not alone something hot out 
of his heart to win them, — he had the fire as 
from the sun which gives life to all things 
and, himself a sailor, he held the key to the 
sailor's heart and knew the wards and wind- 
ings. He was, as Edward Everett once 
finely said, "a walking Bethel." In his 
great moments he could make his sailors 
[39] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

feel the ship alive under them as he stood 
on his quarter deck, and the saltness of the 
sea; could raise the storm and create such 
peril by his magic that there were times 
when the old salts would lose track of Sun- 
day in the Bethel, shout "long boat, long 
boat," and be ready to cast her loose. Then 
he would turn his vision on the instant into 
their souls' peril and cry out to them to be 
saved. He could do this as no other man 
could, while still he had the deep-hearted, 
whole love for the men he would win, which 
is the mother-milk of all true preaching. 
He could say stern things to them when he 
must, as a father may to his children, but 
no other man must say them to his boys 
in his presence and in his Bethel. So when 
a man one day deplored their ignorance 
he turned on him and said: "Jack knows 
more than you do; he holds the whole 
world in his hand as you hold an orange." 
And when one of his boys in the meeting 
once told them what trouble he had gone 
through fighting the devil, he said: "All 
[40] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

right, Jack, that shows you are worth 
tempting or he would let you alone; he 
does not care for chaff." A gentleman 
from Beacon street made a speech one 
Sunday in his meeting full of a fine con- 
descension and told the sailors how grate- 
ful they should be to the merchants of Bos- 
ton in building the Bethel and much more 
of the same tenor. When his eminence 
sat down the old man rose in quite a temper 
and cried, "Is there another old sinner from 
uptown who wants to talk? Now's his 
chance, before we go on with the meeting." 
He called them his boys, his sons, lumps 
of amber saved from the ocean, and held 
them fast to his Bethel and his heart. But 
he was in what might have been in another 
man a very bad temper when the Baptists 
won away from him about thirty of his 
boys. This was a sort of religious larceny 
he could not abide. The Baptists, as the 
report stands, baptized the new converts 
forthwith; but it was bitter weather when 
they were to be immersed and as they 
[41] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

would not be immersed through the ice 
Father Taylor heard they had warmed the 
water to the temper required. He met one 
of his estrays soon after the baptism and 
said to him sternly: "Why did you leave 
your Bethel, sir?" "Why, you see, 
Father," the poor fellow answered with a 
stammer, " I — didn't — feel — safe — unless I 
went down — into — the Jordan." "Down 
into the Jordan," Father Taylor growled, 
"b'iled— Jordan, b'iled!" 

But it was not to be imagined by the 
chaplain that these wild men of the sea 
would answer to such services and sermons 
in the Bethel as were current then in Bos- 
ton, even with Father Taylor for their 
preacher. And here again the man's na- 
tive genius, touched with the divine fire, 
rose to the demand. For as a rule it was 
not so much monologue as dialogue that 
formed the staple of his ministry in most 
of the meetings, and, captain of the Bethel 
as he was always, he gave his hearers of 
the sailor men the priceless privilege of 
[42] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

talking in meeting, asking questions or 
answering, as the mood might take them. 
He commended, encouraged, or rebuked 
them, holding them always in his heart. 
So when one of the sailors shouted to his 
fellows, "The devil told me I was good 
enough, but I heaved him overboard stock 
and fluke," he was delighted by the figure 
and cried, "Well done, Jack, that's salva- 
tion set to music." And when another 
said, "I think faith is suth'n' like tinder: 
shut it up and it will go out, but give it vent 
and it will burn," he cried, "Well done, 
Peter, the Bishop of England could do no 
better than that." 

When Father Taylor was preaching on 
the parable of the wedding garment and 
pictured the wedding guests crowding 
to the supper in their brave attire beautiful 
to see, while those who had no garments to 
honor the feast were turned away, one poor 
fellow in shirt sleeves, entranced by the 
spell, and feeling that his chances at the 
wedding supper were slipping away, started 
[43] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

to his feet in great dolor and cried: "I 
ain't to blame, don't leave me out, I lost 
every thing I had in the wreck of my vessel 
on the coast and had to come here with no 
jacket." So perfect was the picture and 
real to the "boys" that a score of jackets 
were stripped in a score of seconds, while 
they shouted, "Take mine, take mine, and 
mine." And Father Taylor ran up to him 
with the tears running down his furrowed 
face, put his arms about his boy, and cried, 
"Why, Jack, I would not have left you out 
for the world if I had known you had been 
wrecked. You won't think hard of me, 
will you ? " 

When a Negro told his simple and 
pathetic experience in one of these fellow- 
ship meetings and touched the fount of 
the old man's tears, he let them fall 
freely, saying, "There's rain in that 
cloud." And when one of his sailors with 
a fine red head from Cape Cod related his 
experience in words that went to the chap- 
lain's heart, he remarked: "I did not know 
[44] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

the soil down there on the Cape grew such 
good red Cedar." But when another man 
who could pump up tears in quantities rose 
to his feet in the meeting and began to call 
himself names and rain down the tears, 
the chaplain, who knew him down to the 
ground, said quietly, " Cry away, you white- 
headed old sinner, summer showers soon 
dry up; you'll forget all about it in half 
an hour." 

When sailor Wood, again, was talking 
to no purpose except to damp down the 
fires, he cried suddenly, " Lord, set a fire to 
that Wood." And if one left the Bethel 
in mid meeting he would say, "Jack has 
got all he can take care of" or, "A light 
craft floats quick." It is told that once 
when he got tangled up in his speech he 
cried, "I have lost the nominative case," — 
or whatever it might be, — "but I'm on my 
way to glory." One feels a little dubious 
about this, however, because from all we 
can learn his grammar was an instinct and 
not of the schools — as John Bright's was. 

[45] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

So if he lost a point he would make one, 
and a better. He was impatient of all dul- 
ness; that to his eager instinct meant dead- 
ness. And when another lost his way in 
an attempt to speak, but still went maunder- 
ing on, he cried, "Lord, give him the point." 
When another had taken great pains to 
liken religion to a chest of medicines, but 
was making no headway, he cried, "Do 
get that chest open, Jack, and give us a 
dose." 

Still he was very tender and sweet toward 
those who were trying to utter what lay in 
their heart, to bud forth into speech, when 
he felt they were sincere. One day a man 
of foreign birth, a Jew, was moved to speak. 
He took the Psalms when his speech was 
ended and began to recite them in a poly- 
glott of Hebrew and other tongues, at which 
the sailors broke into loud laughter. But 
the chaplain turned on them and said, 
"That's pure Hebrew; don't you know 
Hebrew?" And when a Portuguese sailor, 
when the fervor had risen to white heat 
[46] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

in one of the fellowship meetings, shouted, 
"If a man tell me I don't love my Jesus I 
hit dat man 'tween da eyes," he did not 
rebuke the man, but shook with the silent 
laughter. The poor fellow's sincerity in 
the stress of the moment was so clear and 
his meaning so good in despite of the pov- 
erty of his speech that there was no room 
for rebuke. 

Father Taylor was the very primate of 
wholesome laughter, but could not tolerate 
the laughter of fools that is "as the crack- 
ling of thorns under a pot." He would 
turn on his boys then and ask them if they 
thought they would laugh in hell. He did 
not take stock in the Millerite craze when 
it rose to fever heat in our older states 
about sixty years ago. He saw the danger 
at once and hoisted the signals. But the 
believers gave him great trouble; they 
would come to his meetings and insist on 
the freedom of speech Father Taylor loved 
to maintain. One day a fervent believer 
came with the usual burden of the beasts 
[47] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

and numbers. He was full of his gospel 
and spoke with great fervor. When he sat 
down Father Taylor did not speak, but one 
of the sailors rose and said, "I've heeard a 
many of you fellers, time and time, but 
I only mind one who was as full of it as 
you be, and he just cut his bootstraps and 
went right up." That broke the old chap- 
lain down. Once a man came to his meet- 
ing and insisted on speaking out of his turn 
and time. No man could do this. Father 
Taylor was captain of his Bethel and would 
keep order in his crew. But, still insist- 
ing, the man said: "I must speak because 
the Holy Ghost has sent me." "Then go 
back," the chaplain said, "and tell your 
holy ghost I would not let you speak here 
to-day at all." 

"Lord, deliver us from stale bread," he 
cried once, when a brother on his mission 
came to the Bethel and told the sailors a lot 
of dreary stories from the religious tracts 
of that time. And when another in an ex- 
hortation told them of a man who had led 
[48] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

an evil life through many years, was blown 
up in a powder-mill, came down with only 
a moment to live, but in that moment gave 
his heart to God, was saved, and went 
right to heaven, Father Taylor was aroused 
to a white heat and cried in his wrath: "I 
don't want my men to hear such trash as 
that in my Bethel. I tell you, boys, no 
man can calculate on serving the devil all 
his life and then cheating him with his last 
breath. Don't burn the candle down to the 
end in sin and then give God the snuff. 
Our brother has told you about a man in 
the Bible who said, 'Let me die the death 
of the righteous and let my last end be like 
his': that was Balaam and he was about 
the meanest man you can find there. Let's 
hear no more about either Balaam or his 
ass. Why, boys," he concluded finally, 
"you cannot even calculate on being blown 
up in a powder-mill, anyhow, — and then 
where will you be?" 

This in outline was Father Taylor, the 

[49] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

seaman's chaplain, who could speak to 
every man in his own tongue on the days 
when the fire came down from heaven in 
the likeness of a dove as in the day of the 
Pentecost; who loved his "boys" with 
a great devouring love, and having loved 
them as the Scripture says, loved them to 
the end; called them lumps of amber 
thrown ashore in the storm, or pearls fished 
from the ocean; who could compel them 
to smiles and tears in a breath and yet 
never seemed to know how it was done; 
who could not tolerate a religion that made 
you less a man on the dead watch or in a 
mighty storm face to face and eye to eye 
with death; who insisted that good steel 
should strike fire when the need came, — 
only and always it must be holy fire, — and 
would tell us roundly, seamen or landsmen, 
that putty was of no use in the man he 
would win. And when he went to Niagara, 
where of course they got him to make a 
few remarks, he said: "Niagara is like the 
Gospel I love: it never freezes up in the 
[50] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

winter, never dries up in the dog-days, and 
you never come to it for water and go away 
with an empty bucket." 

They loved him, I said, as few men have 
been loved among the ministers in Boston 
of any name, and flocked to his Bethel 
from all the seas to hear his word and feel 
the beat of his heart. And he drew his 
own portrait when he said: "I am no man's 
model, no man's copy, no man's agent; 
I go on my own hook and say what I please." 
We have heard what he said when he was 
to leave his sailors for a time, but this was 
not all. His heart was greatly moved and 
much cast down as he prayed over his 
sons, as he called them, in great dolor 
for some time. But then the great heart 
leaped up with a bound and he cried: 
"What am I doing? I am distrusting 
heaven, I am not believing that our God 
who gives the great whale a ton of herrings 
for his breakfast can take care of my boys 
while I am away." So the prayer ended 
with a psalm that had opened with a dirge. 
[51] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

Still more than this was demanded from 
our man of pure religious genius dedicated 
to the most high and planted in the very 
centre of the intellectual, moral, and relig- 
ious life of the nation all those years ago, 
and that was Father Taylor's mission to 
Boston as well as to the sailors. For, 
strange as it may seem now, Boston needed 
a man and missionary who would not and 
could not be an echo of Channing or Lyman 
Beecher, but could fight for his own hand 
like Harry Wynd the smith in the great 
story, and put the truth he would tell into 
words that went right home like the 
arrows from the bow of the Conqueror no 
other man could draw. So he said to a 
minister who had insisted in a sermon on 
the fearful dogma of infant damnation: 
"It's of no use, brother, preaching sermons 
like that, because if what you say could be 
true your God would be my Devil." And 
to another who had insisted that the elect 
alone can be saved while the non-elect, 
no matter what they do, will be lost, he 
[52] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

said: "To invite or exhort men to repent 
on those terms is like inviting a lot of 
gravestones home to dinner." And to 
another who was preaching on the same 
theme he said: "Brother, when did you 
hear from Jesus Christ?" Again, when 
the question was mooted in a conference 
whether the children of those who did not 
belong to any church should be baptized, 
he took a little child in his arms and cried, 
"Why, if the devil himself should bring 
me a child like this to baptize I would do 
it. I would say, 'Now, devil, you go where 
you belong, and here, you angels, take the 
baby, he belongs to you.'" "Creeds," he 
said again, "are like Joseph's coat of many 
colors. They are all made of patches. 
No two of them are alike, and none of them 
are like what they were when they were 
made. No man shall make a creed for me 
and I will make one for no man living." 

He would have no doors on his pulpit, 
as was then the fashion. And when a 
brother one Sunday refused his invitation 
[53] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

to enter his pulpit and sit there because 
Henry Ware, an eminent minister of the 
Unitarian faith had sat there the Sunday 
before, he cried, "Lord, there are two 
things we need to be delivered from in 
Boston, — bad rum and bigotry. Which is 
the worst Thou knowest, I don't. Amen." 
He held on to one grand truth and cast it 
into rhyme that rings like the rhymes of 
old Bunyan. 

"My soul can see no God in heaven above 
Who does not show himself a God of love." 

He shot his arrows right and left, but still 
he loved good men and true of every name 
and denomination. My own old friend Dr. 
Neale the Baptist was his dear friend 
also, and Father Haskin of the Catholics; 
and he nourished more than a brother's 
love for Dr. Bartol, in whose church I saw 
and heard him for the first time on that 
memorable May morning, the pentecost of 
the doves. Emerson also was his lifelong 
friend, who lived to see himself canonized, 
[54] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

but was far from this in the earlier years. 
Father Taylor, dear friends as they were, 
was greatly bewildered by the new transcen- 
dentalism, so far away from his own genius 
and yet shall we not say so near. But he 
loved the man with a heart-whole love, 
while he berated his teaching. He said: 
"Emerson, I think, is the sweetest soul 
God ever made, but he knows no more about 
theology than Balaam's ass knew about 
Hebrew grammar." Still he held that if 
the devil got him he would not know what 
to do with him. " There seems to be a screw 
loose in him somewhere," he said again, "but 
I never could find it, and listen as I may 
I can find no jar in the machinery." And 
he struck the climax, I think, of his many 
sayings when some one said in his hearing 
that he feared Emerson would go to hell. 
"Go there," he cried, shaking his mane. 
"Why if he went there he would change the 
climate and the tide of emigration would 
turn that way." He once said to our great 
apostle Channing: "When you die the 
[55] 

LOFC. 



FATHER TAYLOR 

angels will contend for the honor of carrying 
you to heaven on their shoulders." 

In his own city as a citizen Father Taylor 
also swung free, courting no man's smile, 
fearing no man's frown. In a prayer for 
President Lincoln he cried: "Lord, save 
him from those piercing, wriggling, slimy, 
boring keel worms. Don't let them bore 
through the sheathing of his integrity. " 
And once when he read the Proclamation 
for the Thanksgiving and came to the prayer 
'God save the Commonwealth of Massa- 
chusetts,' he added, "He did that last 
Tuesday." His love for Webster was like 
worship. But when the great light paled 
and gave forth only smoke in the last days, 
he said: "Webster is too bad to trust with 
any thing very good now, and too good to 
throw away; he is the best bad man I ever 
knew." 

This was Father Taylor so far as I can 
touch the story of his life and his genius 
as it touched the heart of Boston, who 
[56] 



FATHER TAYLOR 

adopted him as her beloved son. Other 
men were greater in other ways, but I think 
he had no equal in this winged wit that went 
home, — this force as of a rifle-ball at short 
range. He had his limitations, but was so 
sincere and so right where the fastness of 
all Tightness dwells, — in a man's soul, — 
and was Father Taylor 

"who never sold the truth to serve the hour 
Or paltered with Eternal God for power." 

No life, when we consider his environ- 
ments, could well be more perilous than 
this of Father Taylor, or more desolate in 
the earlier years. And when he came to 
himself he not only used his noble gifts 
nobly but gave himself with them a living 
sacrifice for the men who go down to the 
sea in ships first, and then to help all 
around. He squandered nothing on Edward 
Taylor and did not ask, What is pleasant 
or, What will "pay," but, What shall I do 
to work the work of Him that sent me. 
He wanted nothing for himself and so all 
things were given him his heart could 
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FATHER TAYLOR 

desire, — honor, love, obedience, troops of 
friends,— the sorrow of a great city and sor- 
row on the sea when he died. 

A waif in Virginia; a youth "roughing 
it" on the ocean; the temptations of a young 
sailor's life when he came ashore; unable to 
read when he was eighteen; privateersman, 
prisoner, and whatever he must be beside 
in the years of his preparation; working 
ahead always and never falling back, and 
winning his way to this noble eminence, 
not by his genius alone, for that might have 
cursed him, but by his conduct and char- 
acter and the help which is in us all if we 
will use it to look higher than our mortal 
eyes and listen for diviner words than ever 
fall on our mortal ears, — make centerstsaices 
by the help of the Most High stronger than 
circumstances, — make our life noble as he 
did, and win the good ' Well done.' 



[58] 



NOV 22 1906 



